NASA's Mars InSight Flexes Its Arm

New images from NASA's Mars InSight lander show its
robotic arm is ready to do some lifting.

With a reach of nearly 6 feet (2 meters), the arm will be
used to pick up science instruments from the lander's deck, gently setting them
on the Martian surface at Elysium Planitia, the lava plain where InSight touched
down on Nov. 26.

But first, the arm will use its Instrument Deployment
Camera, located on its elbow, to take photos of the terrain in front of the
lander. These images will help mission team members determine where to set
InSight's seismometer and heat flow probe - the only instruments ever to be
robotically placed on the surface of another planet.

"Today we can see the first glimpses of our workspace,"
said Bruce Banerdt, the mission's principal investigator at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "By early next week, we'll
be imaging it in finer detail and creating a full mosaic."

Another camera, called the Instrument Context Camera, is
located under the lander's deck. It will also offer views of the workspace,
though the view won't be as pretty.

"We had a protective cover on the Instrument Context
Camera, but somehow dust still managed to get onto the lens," said Tom
Hoffman of JPL, InSight's project manager. "While this is unfortunate, it
will not affect the role of the camera, which is to take images of the area in
front of the lander where our instruments will eventually be placed."

Placement is critical, and the team is proceeding with
caution. Two to three months could go by before the instruments have been
situated and calibrated.

Over the past week and a half, mission engineers have been
testing those instruments and spacecraft systems, ensuring they're in working
order. A couple instruments are even recording data: a drop in air pressure,
possibly caused by a passing dust devil, was detected by the pressure sensor.
This, along with a magnetometer and a set of wind and temperature sensors, are
part of a package called the Auxiliary Payload Sensor Subsystem, which will
collect meteorological data.

More images from InSight's arm were scheduled to come down
this past weekend. However, imaging was momentarily interrupted, resuming the
following day. During the first few weeks in its new home, InSight has been
instructed to be extra careful, so anything unexpected will trigger what's called
a fault. Considered routine, it causes the spacecraft to stop what it is doing
and ask for help from operators on the ground.

"We did extensive testing on Earth. But we know that
everything is a little different for the lander on Mars, so faults are not
unusual," Hoffman said. "They can delay operations, but we're not in
a rush. We want to be sure that each operation that we perform on Mars is safe,
so we set our safety monitors to be fairly sensitive initially."

Spacecraft engineers had already factored extra time into
their estimates for instrument deployment to account for likely delays caused
by faults. The mission's primary mission is scheduled for two Earth years, or
one Mars year - plenty of time to gather data from the Red Planet's surface.

About InSight

JPL manages InSight for NASA's
Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program,
managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its
cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.

A number of European partners,
including France's Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German
Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES and the Institut
de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP) provided the Seismic Experiment for
Interior Structure (SEIS)
instrument, with significant contributions from the Max Planck Institute for
Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany, the Swiss Institute of Technology (ETH)
in Switzerland, Imperial College and Oxford University in the United Kingdom,
and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3)
instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK)
of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain's Centro de
Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the wind sensors.